Made in Harlem: #WHATPIANODISTRICT and Adama

#WHATPIANODISTRICT

Annmarie Soba, 2016, 8 minA teenage girl reacts in outrage as her South Bronx neighborhood begins the process of gentrification. This film was produced at the Maysles Documentary Center in the Van Lier Fellowship program.

Adama

David Sutcliffe, 2011, 60 minOn March 24th, 2005, Adama Bah, a 16-year-old Muslim girl, awoke at dawn to discover nearly a dozen armed government agents inside her family’s apartment in East Harlem. She was arrested and taken to a maximum-security juvenile detention center in Pennsylvania. An FBI document leaked to the press mysteriously identified Adama as a “potential” suicide bomber and an “imminent threat to the security of the United States.” After six weeks of public protest and media scrutiny, Adama was released with an ankle bracelet and a deportation order, but no terrorist charges. Still traumatized by the experience of her detention, Adama must drop out of high school and support her four younger siblings when her father is deported to Guinea, Africa. Using intimate verité footage, Adama captures the extreme pressures bearing down on this young Muslim girl and her desperate efforts to keep her family from unraveling.

Third World Newsreel is a progressive alternative media center that distributes, produces and trains, focusing on media by and about people of color. It is celebrating its 50th year of progressive media making.

This program is part of Made in Harlem, (March-May 2017), a film series for, by and about Harlem, and including Harlem-made films, filmmakers, speakers and subjects. Made in Harlem is sponsored by the West Harlem Development Corporation.

This program is also part of the Seventh Art Stand, a nation-wide series of films presented by movie theaters and community centers across the U.S. as an act of cinematic solidarity against Islamophobia throughout the month of May 2017. The Seventh Art Stand is a cinematic act of solidarity against Islamophobia and the Travel Ban. More than 50 cinemas, art museums, community centers and libraries are participating, with special programming selected by each venue.

Made in Harlem: #WHATPIANODISTRICT and Adama is also in celebration of the birth of late, great Black American Muslim leader Malcolm X (Born May 19th, 1925).